Be human: Mass media was based on the notion of reaching millions of people with one message. As a result, that message often came across in an impersonal, corporate voice. Social media provides an opportunity to be more personal, informal and conversational.

Don’t trust what you read on the internet? That’s no longer the dominant sentiment in the US, according to a new poll by Zogby International. A survey of more than 3000 people performed in the two days after the US Presidential Election found that 37.6% of respondents considered the Internet the most reliable source of news, 20.3% consider national TV news most reliable and 16% said that radio is the most reliable source.

The survey found that most people find all the news biased in some way and there were a number of other interesting findings. It’s quite striking, though, that we’re at a point in history where the internet is trusted more than TV and the Radio!

Saw University of Memphis journalism prof Carrie Brown’s tweet about this. I don’t often link to graduate students’ thesis papers, but this is an elegant read: Journalism-as-a-Conversation: A Concept Explication (Word doc), by Doreen Marchionni, a doctoral student at the University of Missouri-Columbia (which is still turning out the bright ones). Excerpt:

Journalism can’t tell the truth because no one can tell the truth. All journalism can do is preside over and within the conversation of our culture: to stimulate it and organize it, to keep it moving, and to leave a record of it so that other conversations –– art, science, religion –– might have something off which they can feed. The public will begin to reawaken when they are addressed as a conversation partner and are encouraged to join the talk rather than sit passively as spectators before a discussion conducted by journalists and experts.

The newsroom would be set in a larger media center, presumably shared by other student and academic groups.

A central location so the new building will be at the crossroads of campus life

The background

The plan is the culmination of 18 months of work that began back in Spring 2007, when we learned that we would receive a News Challenge grant from the Knight Foundation. The idea for the project originated back in October 2006 when I was visiting Duke for a Chronicle alumni event. Duke is considering a massive expansion of its campus, and part of that new construction originally included space for a “media center” of some kind. This required The Chronicle, which is independent of the university, to confront some big questions about its future.

Freelance writing certainly has many advantages and can be rewarding too.

It goes without saying that in order to become a freelance writer, you gotta love writing. But you should also consistently work on sharpening your skills. And how do you do that? Reading well-written articles and blogs is a very good start! This can help you write innovative and appealing content.